The Resonance Cascadehttp://theresonancecascade.com
A blog for music reviews, more music reviews, some music reviews, and occasionally other things that take my fancyWed, 02 Jan 2019 21:28:44 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.3The Music of 2018: Albums, Songs, and Summary.http://theresonancecascade.com/the-music-of-2018-albums-songs-and-summary/
http://theresonancecascade.com/the-music-of-2018-albums-songs-and-summary/#commentsThu, 27 Dec 2018 19:24:17 +0000http://theresonancecascade.com/?p=415Continue reading The Music of 2018: Albums, Songs, and Summary.→]]>The Return of the Instrumental (and Poland Rising)

This was not one of my better years for musical discoveries. However, the past few years have been so good that I suppose the odds were against another, and it did not arrive. I only managed to come up with maybe 25 albums I wanted to listen to more than once, and some of those didn’t make it to a third play.

So: this year I have 15 albums in the list, like in other years, but I’ve decided to rank only the first five. The rest are in alphabetical order. Each of the final ten has its strong points, each its weaknesses, and any order I put them in would be largely arbitrary. Of the top five: I have to say only the first 2 albums are truly stellar, the third is definitely better than the rest, and 4 and 5 are strong enough to rank. You will find My Best Albums of the Year below the fold.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the fact that the three best albums (to my ears) for 2018 are all from Polish outfits. I’m pretty sure this is the first country sweep I’ve had. See more below….

As noted in the title: 2018 sees the inclusion of a lot of instrumental albums, in fact more than half on the list. These albums range from post-rock and post-metal, industrial/EBM, through to electronica-meets-modern-classical. I think the number of them is higher because of a combination of new discoveries, albums from established instrumental acts, and releases from outfits who have been off the radar for a while. Gösta Berlings Saga and Floex have new ones, while Solar Fields, Leech, and Front Line Assembly gave us their first releases in several years. The ever-prolific Necro Deathmort released yet another. The Fierce and the Dead dropped one, as did Toundra.

The rest are pretty much rock: heavy rock, melodic hard rock, blues rock. That’s okay, I like good rock n roll. This year there were no metal offerings (well…Judas Priest…), or syncretic surprises. Alas the new Dead Can Dance (speaking of syncretic) did not survive past the third playthrough. I suppose there was one album you could call “prog” (not counting the one by the prog band Who Is Not Prog).

For the most part, the ones that didn’t make the final list, notably: Shriekback, VNV Nation, Awooga (among some other lesser known outfits) missed the boat because their anticipated releases nosedived in the Expectations Department. Shriekback’s quirky art-rock has become more quirk than art, Conduit by Awooga sounds almost indistinguishable from their first EP Alpha, and the new VNV Nation, with the exception of a couple of tracks in the latter half, is just plain boring.

Numbers 1, 2, and 3 all come from Poland. Something in the water for sure.

5. Nordic Union: Second Coming

I like this album a whole lot more than I expected from the first couple of listens. But you know, it is melodic hard rock exactly as advertised, from guys who know their stuff. There is nothing wrong with getting exactly what you pay for, and that puts it ahead of most of the other things on my list this year.

This album hit very early in the year, so there was lots of time to forget about it. I’m not a huge fan of blues rock (although there have been a couple of recent albums that I have liked a lot), but these guys (UK-based) really kick it into gear and keep your interest. I revisited it the other day, and yes, it is still a great album. The first few tracks kick some serious ass, and then settles into a more sedate groove, but It really is smart and accomplished. A couple of songs are real tear-jerkers too.

They put on a damned fine show live too, if you like straight-up hard-working musicians without the frills. These guys deliver.

3. Lunatic Soul: Under the Fragmented Sky

Number 3 comes from Mariusz Duda’s solo project Lunatic Soul. Under the Fragmented Sky is a huge relief after the puzzling diversion that was Fractured; I feel he has gotten back on track and I’m not so worried any more about the LS albums to come. Well, it was a rather unsettled past few years for him. I hope those old ghosts are exorcised.

It seems that every year brings at least one release that surprises the hell out of me, mostly because it comes out of nowhere and is from an outfit otherwise completely unknown to me. So, let me present this year’s Huge Surprise — Osada Vida. I know pretty much nothing about them, and my chances of ever seeing them live are about zero, but this is one seriously great album. I hope they keep on doing what they’re doing, because it’s so damned good.

With Wasteland, not only has Riverside resurrected itself, it has demonstrated a freshness, a scope let’s say, that presages a level of greatness only hinted at before. I know many people will disagree with me on this, and for sentiment’s sake it is not an easy point to make, but I think the new Riverside has a strength and vision the old one had somehow misplaced after the fourth album. The last two albums by the original quartet (by which I mean Shrine of New Generation Slaves and Love, Fear and the Time Machine; Eye of the Soundscape is a different project) had sagged some in quality; but Wasteland is staggeringly good. Different, to be sure, and it should be different given the circumstances, but it does raise one’s hopes for future albums.

]]>http://theresonancecascade.com/the-music-of-2018-albums-songs-and-summary/feed/4Albums of 2018: Numbers 6 – 15http://theresonancecascade.com/albums-of-2018-numbers-6-15/
http://theresonancecascade.com/albums-of-2018-numbers-6-15/#commentsThu, 27 Dec 2018 19:17:33 +0000http://theresonancecascade.com/?p=419Continue reading Albums of 2018: Numbers 6 – 15→]]>As noted in the Introduction (which I hope you read first, link here), I have not actually ranked these albums, they are listed in alphabetical order. They do not differ from each other enough for a ranking to even make sense. They are albums that I play reasonably often, and/or have qualities that make them interesting, enough that others might find them worth pursuing (in fact some already have — some of these albums rank pretty high in other people’s lists). And fully seven of the ten here are instrumental.

Dead Letter Circus: Dead Letter Circus

This Aussie post-punk/indie bunch burst onto the scene in 2010 with a powerful first album, which contained some thoughtful, heavy tracks and a lot of promise. Alas, they never really seemed to be able to live up to that promise. Their second album, The Catalyst Fire, quite frankly was a mess, while the third, Aethesis, was about halfway listenable.

This, their fourth, finds them converging towards shorter pieces that are focused on their strengths: intense melodic rock, nicely-constructed, very consistent, even if the tracks begin to sound a bit the same towards the end. If they continue in this direction they may finally come up with the album they are capable of making.

Dope Default: Ofrenda

A debut album from a Greek blues/hard-rock outfit, and it seems to promise something that might be worth following up on, if this is the kind of music you like. The album is a bit variable, and quite rough, but it does rock.

The Fierce and the Dead: The Euphoric

This album has received a lot of critical acclaim, landing high up in a few year-end lists, and given that instrumental rock/prog/whathaveyou albums are not normally the top-sellers in the genre, the guys should be very proud. That being said, I have to confess that a real love for TFatD has eluded me, despite the fact that I own most of their output. Obviously I like them, but I think the issue here is their technicality — I find it overrides the emotion I look for. Lots of chops, not so much feels. Still, The Euphoric is upbeat and cheerful and no chore to listen to, and better than a lot of the other stuff I heard this year.

Floex (Tomáš Dvořák) and Tom Hodge: A Portrait of John Doe

Clarinetist Floex (Tomáš Dvořák), best known for his game soundtracks (Samarost, Machinaria among others) pairs with British composer Tom Hodge to make an album marrying ambient/electronica with modern classical. Interesting stuff, actually, maybe not for everyday listening or to all tastes. It mostly works.

Front Line Assembly: WarMech

A few years ago FLA contributed the OST for the game AirMech, and it was pretty well-received, so it only makes sense they would also provide the soundtrack for the follow-up game WarMech.
It’s a pretty good album, has some killer tracks, but I find it variable. It is, of course, a soundtrack so mood and style must accommodate the scenes.

Gösta Berlings Saga: Et Ex

Gosta Berlings Saga. I have to say I am not as crazy about this as I am about Sersophane … they seem to have gotten away from the lush emotion of that album, and veering towards more technical — but it’s good. These guys are no tyros.

Judas Priest: Firepower

An album from some old pros that got a lot of people excited because it hearkens back to the classic Priest sound. Which I was never fond of, not being a a fan of those operatic metal singers, or actually much in the way of metal/hard rock back in the day. But … tastes change, and voices can improve. Halford is listenable, and the album is quite good.

Leech: For Better or for Worse

A few years ago I played an album just because I liked the way the cover looked. That album belonged to Leech, and it had been released way back in 2012. I liked it a lot — lush and heavy instrumental post-metal, and hey the guys are from Switzerland, not a country that churns out a lot of bands anyway. After 6 long years they released their new album, and it sounds pretty much like Leech. Long, complex, atmospheric tracks that often start slow and gradually build to real stompers.

Necro Deathmort: Vol. 4

Well, another year, another ND album. These guys never quit. Vol. 4 is mostly ambient drone metal with some unsettlingly metallic sections — not metal, but metallic; listening to a couple of these tracks is like biting down on copper.

Toundra: Vortex

The Spanish quartet drops their fifth, which I think is their most consistent effort to date, dense post-metal with some folky influences, but hard-edged. They can jug along pretty relentlessly.

]]>http://theresonancecascade.com/albums-of-2018-numbers-6-15/feed/1The Music of 2018: EPs, Songs, and Things I Missedhttp://theresonancecascade.com/the-music-of-2018-eps-songs-and-things-i-missed/
http://theresonancecascade.com/the-music-of-2018-eps-songs-and-things-i-missed/#respondThu, 27 Dec 2018 19:09:16 +0000http://theresonancecascade.com/?p=417Continue reading The Music of 2018: EPs, Songs, and Things I Missed→]]>I’ll start with the odds and ends of 2018. A few EPs were released that deserve mention but aren’t really long enough to be included in the album list. As well, some of the albums that didn’t make the list in the end did provide a great track or two, even if the rest of the album wasn’t up to snuff. And as always, I find stuff during the year that was released the year before, I just wasn’t paying attention at the time.

EPs

Gary Numan: The Fallen

An addendum to the spectacular Savage album from 2017, the ep provides 3 additional tracks.

King Buffalo: Repeater

This appears to have been a taster for their subsequent full-length release, but I have to admit that I’m not a huge psych rock fan so these three tracks are plenty for me.

The Vliets: Semiwestern

These guys pop up every once in a while with some short offerings of their quirky brand of simple electronica, but you know, their stuff makes for a pleasant listen. They do have a knack for melody and they don’t layer on the effects.

Glass Apple Bonzai: Lucid Dream

A guy who really understands old-school synthwave, and does it well. On this release he teams up again with Hello Moth on the vocals (who appeared on last year’s GAB album), for a catchy retrowave tune. Either mix is great (the third track is pretty much filler).

Single Tracks

VNV Nation: “When is the Future?”

Not sure what happened with this album, but it really did nothing for me. Slow and ponderous and self-important without being interesting. Except for this track, which is killer.

Solar Fields: “Moving Lines”

Another album in which earnestness overwhelmed interest. Yes, Save the Planet, but at least make more than one track worth listening to.

Seeming: “I Recognize You”

A track from a huge compilation of various things industrial, but this one is outstanding. Alex Reed again presents us with incisive lyric brilliance, and reminds me why Sol was the Album of 2017.

There were only a couple of things that I failed to notice, or didn’t follow up on from the previous year:

Believe: VII Widows

I am pretty much not a fan of long-winded modern prog, but VII Widows is surprisingly good, very nice arrangements and passages, and I must say beautiful guitar themes by Mirek Gil –they are reminiscent of Steve Hackett at times, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am not crazy about the somewhat overblown and mannered style of the vocalist, but there are few enough vocal sections that he ends up intruding less on the experience than would otherwise be the case. Nice and listenable.

Decapitated: Anticult

Now, this band is a major find. I had never put myself down as a fan of thrash metal (or technical death metal, or whatever) but these guys are seriously good. I know the die-hards argue over whether the early or latest albums are better, but I think I like the last two better. More heavy riffs, more head-banging goodness, and the vocalist has a growl-style I can actually tolerate for an entire album’s worth. “Kill the Cult” gets a ton of play from me.

I might not have had much luck finding interesting stuff this year, but that doesn’t mean other people had the same problem.

“Hm,” said one friend in a review. “I keep coming back to this album. Except I don’t like the singer much.”

Okay, thought I, let me check it out.

Well now.

I keep coming back to the album again and again as well. And again. And I like the singer just fine.

I had been vaguely aware of the name “Osada Vida” for some time, but I had no idea who or what the entity was, or where they hailed from, let alone what they sounded like. Just one of the many references to musicians that pass through my newsfeed on a daily basis, too many to really be able to pursue. As it turns out Osada Vida is a Polish outfit who have been around for over 20 years, with a handful of albums and various changes of personnel; the current lineup includes a new singer/lyricist, Marcel Lisiak. I will confess to not yet having checked out the back catalogue, so I don’t know how he compares to the last guy — or how Variomatic compares to anything else they’ve done.

What I can say is this: whoever they are, they bring a ton of songwriting and musicianship chops to the table. The album is essentially keyboard-and guitar-heavy prog, but it also showcases a variety of other influences: a bit of folk, a bit of jazz-rock, a bit of classical — all intertwined with consummate skill. A showcase track for this is “The Line”, which over its 6 minutes moves from heavy to a smooth instrumental break, ramps it up again, and finally finishes with a little funky fusion. This is a marvellous piece, and essentially is a microcosm of the whole album. Lots of ideas swirl around but they are assembled and presented with confidence and care; melody is honoured. Lisiak’s light, accentless tenor (he sings in English) does fit well with the songs. I don’t know how it would come across live, but it works in the studio.

Variomatic is an album of immense sophistication and nuance, impeccably executed, as smooth as the smoothest single-malt, accomplished and as smart as hell, and a joy to listen to every time I put it on. It just makes me feel good to hear it. That being said, I suspect this album will not get anywhere near the attention it deserves. It is an outstanding offering, and is likely to see a lot of future play from me. If I am going to listen to prog, this is what I want to hear: something that sounds fresh and new and doesn’t rehash the well-worn tropes that so many modern prog bands seem to think is necessary. I hope I can convince some other folks to give this album a try.

Back in 2016 two old pros of the nordic hard rock scene: Ronnie Atkins of Pretty Maids (Denmark), and Erik Martensson of Eclipse (Sweden) joined up to make the first Nordic Union album. It turned out to be a decent, listenable amalgam of the two bands, with one or two great hard-rock stompers (notably the track “Hypocrisy”). It was good enough that news of a follow-up was welcome.

Three singles were released and two of them showed some serious promise; alas the third was a slow moving and unabashedly political take-down of Donald Trump. I didn’t much like it, and it remains my least favourite track on the album.

At any rate, the album also has a lot of slower, more ballady numbers, and while Atkins has a real talent for those kinds of songs they are not my favourites, I prefer the face-melters. So I was prepared to be disappointed again, for the most part. Two or three good rocking tracks and an okay batch for the rest of the album…but somehow, I kept listening. And somehow, the whole album started to dig its way in. I realized after about a week or so that I was listening to this album – all of it – pretty relentlessly. It was also supplying way more than its share of my daily dose of earworms.

Overall Second Coming is much more consistent than the first album; I find the songwriting to be more mature and confident, which I suppose is to be expected with the experience these guys bring to the table. Even the slower tracks have a satisfying heaviness. “It Burns” is still not great, but it is easier to overlook now. Lots of melody here, lots of thick guitar, and of course Atkins’ mighty sledgehammer vocals. The standout tracks for sure are “Walk Me Through the Fire”, and “Because of Us”, both relentless hard-as-granite headbangers, and I have an inexplicable fondness for “The Final War”. Ronnie Atkins’ Christianity is not a thing I have ever heard him say a single word about, but it is clearly evident given some of the songs that make their way onto Pretty Maids albums. This track is explicitly The Book of Revelation’s End of the World with a pounding beat, and to be quite honest if we are all to die in a conflagration of good versus evil (which these days does not seem so farfetched), it may as well be to a heavy metal soundtrack.

If you have been reading reviews for Wasteland, you already know how they tend to start, so I will not repeat all that. In summary: Wasteland is probably the most fraught album in Riverside’s career, awaited with enormous anticipation, apprehension, trepidation…and so on. As fans, we all know why.

The big question is: Did the decision to continue as a trio, with no permanent replacement for the beloved Piotr Grudziński, actually work? Did they pull it off? The responses have ranged from enthusiastic “absolutely!”s to carefully worded versions of “nope”, and everything in between. The only thing we knew for sure about Wasteland was that it wasn’t going to be the same as the previous albums, but Mariusz Duda always says that. I did have a hint of the sound to come, hearing something early in the spring albeit in an unfinished form, and I liked it very much; but auditory memory being what it is (bad), I wasn’t willing to bet the farm on that few minutes of a demo heard once.

Three singles were released in the weeks before the album hit. Promotion, marketing – it is an understandable practice, but it is fair to say that for the most part, these songs caused more consternation than relief among the fanbase. I was certainly among those consternated. The first, “Vale of Tears”, despite some interesting moments, came across as a rather cliché poppy mashup of … well, everything. What on earth was that all about? There was a gradual improvement with the next two such that by the time “Lament” appeared, folks had gotten their hopes up again…but still, doubt had been sown.

Then Wasteland arrived. And all my doubts were vaporized. Well, after about the third listen…but gone.

I do not usually review track-by-track because I find those reviews the least interesting, and I don’t want to write the kind of review I wouldn’t want to read. However, in this case there is an even more compelling reason to avoid it, and that is the nature of the album itself.

Wasteland is a concept album, set in a post-apocalyptic world, a theme driven by the novel The Road and one that Duda has been interested in tackling for several years now. But Wasteland is more than a collection of songs with a common lyric theme. It is an organic unity, a miracle of musical cohesiveness such that it cannot be taken apart into its components and retain the same impact. The way the individual tracks meld and twine together, sliding ineluctably one to the next – you can literally forget there are track breaks. The songs are varied in their styles and approaches, but the arrangement of them is sheer genius: the contrasts of light and dark, oozing and sinuous heaviness with pure acoustic and vocal delicacy — by the end of the album the overwhelming sense is of having heard a huge emotional set-piece, a single mighty epic. This is the key — what counts, for me, is the resonance an album leaves behind when it is done. And with Wasteland, I know I have heard something extraordinary.

There are bits and pieces that on their own don’t hit me (such as “Guardian Angel”), but in the context of the album, I forget that. Each of the singles takes on a new life and strength. “Vale of Tears”, which does not work on its own, gains enormous salience: it becomes a microcosm, a fractal reflection of the whole album. “River Down Below” is now more than just a nice ballad, and “Lament” becomes almost too emotionally powerful to bear. Bookended by the beautiful and disquieting a cappella of “The Day After” and the heartbreaking piano/vocal theme of “The Night Before”, Wasteland is a single unbroken journey, that should be followed from the first note to the last, an odyssey fraught with hope and terror, despair and love, an emotional tour-de-force, a truly masterful achievement.

Mariusz Duda promised a return to heavy, and indeed he was true to his word. Wasteland is heavy in an almost literal sense: passages of monstrous mass and weight, a huge density of sound, thick and layered, overwhelming and inexorable. This weight is interleaved with sections of delicacy and shocking beauty, gloriously melodious keyboards, acoustic guitar of enormous presence. Electric guitar is certainly here, but it is handled quite differently than ever before — minimized into the background until the solos appear. And because three different stylists provide them — Meller’s jagged, raw style, Owczarek’s smoother sound, and Duda’s melodic soaring lines in “Lament” — they add a surprisingly rich texture to the album. The piccolo bass gives an unsettlingly caustic, buzzy take on the normal electric guitar sound, enhancing the album’s sense of anxiety and foreboding. The desolation is made complete by the eerie, wailing voice of Michał Jelonek’s violin.

At least one reviewer (Polish) mentioned how strong the Slavic/traditional folk influences are, which (as a non-eastern-European) are not specifically obvious to my ears. However, I am an old folk-rock fan from way back, and traditional folk from almost anywhere has a certain plangency that is clearly evident in these songs; and of course there is the adroit and witty hat-tip to the great Ennio Morricone. This album also resonates with the essence of classic prog (especially in “Struggle for Survival”). I can hear echoes of King Crimson, Camel, Tull, but this is the genius of Riverside, their signature sound: the effortless, instinctive evocation of what prog meant when it was new, and fresh, and forward-looking, before it became so self-indulgent, so deliberate — what prog was before we called it “prog”.

I do have a nit-pick: Duda keeps calling the album (and Riverside’s sound in general) “melancholic”. I guess we are using different meanings for that word because to my ears Wasteland is anything but melancholic. It is no fount of cheer to be sure, but it does not evoke sadness or gloom or despondency, all notions wound up in the idea of melancholy. This is an album of great life and passion, grim at times but still full of vitality, a fierce determination to endure, driven not by despair but by love and optimism. This is not melancholy.

It is difficult to predict who is going to take to this album and who is not. The reviews have been rather mixed: accolades on the one hand, and careful dissension on the other — reviewers seem reluctant to actually pan the album, given the circumstances, but one gets the impression that some of them would like to. I suppose it depends on one’s personal limits to “different”. Love Fear and the Time Machine being different from Shrine of New Generation Slaves is one thing, but a complete shift in the underlying gestalt in order to accommodate their new triptych reality is something else again. And this is what we have: a new band, a new reality — and a new sound. There are those who honestly seem to want a return to something reminiscent of the Reality Dream period, or a continuation of the last album, but they are not going to find it here.

At the end of the day, all the reviewing, analysis, and dissection aside, it comes down to this: how do I respond to this album when I play it? Ultimately, that is all that matters. And with Wasteland…what happens is something that has not happened for a long, long time. This is an album that I lose myself in, completely and unreservedly. I am transported, helpless to it, every single time I play it. So far I have been unable to talk myself out of the idea that Wasteland is the best Riverside album to date. And while it is a couple years too early for me to declare it a member of my All Time Best list, it certainly feels like it belongs there. Wasteland owns me. It grabs me and finds that magic spot in my soul in a way that very very few albums ever do. I honestly do not know how the guys can top this one, and I am almost afraid of what might happen to me if they do. But I sure look forward to them trying.

Once upon a time, I watched a YouTube video. It featured several middle-aged, somewhat grizzled gentlemen and a younger man with wild black hair, playing various instruments and videoed from rather odd angles. The bass player sat, substantial and impassive, wearing nothing but a small pair of underwear.

What I saw (and heard) is hard to describe – I barely understood it the first time through and had to immediately watch it about six more times. Whatever these guys were doing, it was like nothing I had ever heard (or seen) before. Imagine a slightly psychotic pop song, except with more rhythmic shifts and time-signature changes and sudden breaks and mad musical ideas packed into four minutes than most artists can fit on an entire album, pulled off by guys who looked like the sort of guys who get together to jam on amateur night at the local pub. And pulled off absolutely flawlessly, tighter-than-tight, with maniacal skill.

The band was, of course, the Cardiacs, and the video was “Jibber and Twitch Rehearsal”. This review isn’t about that video, but it illustrates the basic process I went through while listening to Sing to God. Which I believe (but honestly don’t remember) was my next real foray into the labyrinthine musical miracle that is Tim Smith and Cardiacs, after poking around on YouTube and ending up overwhelmed.

When it comes to Cardiacs, people fall into one of two camps – those who realize that what they are hearing is like nothing else and nothing that ever will be; and those who simply never get it. There is very little in-between. Loving Cardiacs is not a gradual process, really: it generally consists of playing (almost anything by them), listening with bemusement and disbelieving laughter, possibly with many interjections of “What the f*** are they doing???” followed by the overwhelming need to do it again. Which is the key – if you do not feel the need to immediately play something else (or replay whatever it was you just sat through) – you will likely fall into the latter camp. If the former, then one day, one playthrough, it will hit you like you were on the road to Damascus: instant revelation, and conversion.

Cardiacs are out of England, and have existed in one form or another since 1977, with their most famous lineup from the mid-80s that included Sara Smith on saxophone and William D. Drake on keyboards. They never broke through with any major hits, and given their eccentric, complex, manic and unpredictable (not to mention largely unclassifiable) sound, this is no real surprise. However, they (or more precisely Tim Smith) have been profoundly influential, cited by such acts as Blur, Faith No More, Tool, Korn, and Steven Wilson (who covered their track “Stoneage Dinosaurs”), among others.

None of their lineups was ever stable, and by the time Sing to God was recorded in 1996 it had been reduced to a foursome: Tim and his brother Jim Smith, Jon Poole, and Bob Leith (the lineup on the “Rehearsals” YouTube videos has Kavus Torabi replacing Poole on guitar). And for many years, their recordings were very difficult to find. It was only in 2014 that Sing to God was re-released on vinyl (which as of this writing is still available on their website https://www.cardiacs.net/ ).

So what about Sing to God? The lineup (as noted above) is relatively spare, compared to other Cardiac incarnations, but that does not mean the music is spare. Quite the contrary: there is density and complexity and layer upon layer of sound—raucous guitar, keyboards, vocals; and as always with these guys, the unexpected: random noises, bizarre little background themes, mutterings and conversations. And of course the relentless time changes and rhythmic chaos. The track styles range from jagged pop through meandering instrumental voyages to near-ballads of heartbreaking beauty, with plenty of abrupt shifts in direction along the way. And throughout we are treated to Tim Smith’s special brand of stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

There is a lot of room for all this: The album is a massive 22 tracks and 90 minutes long, so there is no way to do a track-by-track even if I wanted to. But maybe we can boil it down to some highlights.

“Eden on the Air”: the album begins with a gentle tinkling of bells and a relatively sedate vocal line over a slow, melodic keyboard and bass theme – but do not be fooled. Trust me.

“Manhoo”: a choppy, cheery pop song (Smith always did claim Cardiacs were just a pop band), with a manic chipmunk chorus. This may actually be one of the more straightforward songs on the album.

“Dirty Boy”: often described as the greatest song Cardiacs ever created, a nine-minute monument to the word “epic”, an utter behemoth of a track, an Everest of genius that most musicians would sell their own soul and those of their entire family tree to be able to climb just one time. And this is only halfway through the album.

Sing to God winds up with two remarkable tracks: “Nurses Whispering Verses”, a revision of a song first released in 1981; but this version is almost as pure prog as Cardiacs ever got, albeit “prog” with a twist.

The other is “Foundling”, which to my ears rivals any of the Cardiac slow tracks, beautiful vocal themes over a rather magnificent, odd-sounding keyboard which may well be the “television organ” of the credits (an organ built by their former keyboard player William D. Drake, out of a television).

Is Sing to God their masterpiece? As with anything labelled in such a fashion, it depends on who you ask. There will always be those who prefer the rather more expansive sound of the “classic” 80s lineup, and when you play, say, “Big Ship”, it is hard to argue. As the years go by the consensus seems to be converging on the opinion that Sing to God is an album that was the pinnacle of the Cardiacs output: It certainly garnered a lot of critical acclaim, with some reviewers declaring it one of the greatest albums ever made by anyone — with the notable exception of Vox magazine which awarded it 0/10. But see above: there is no middle ground with Cardiacs. An acquired taste, and admittedly not an easily-acquired one. But once gotten, it will never leave.

In 2008 Tim Smith suffered a massive heart attack and stroke, and has been profoundly physically disabled since. I think it is the sad truth that the Cardiacs are no more, as Smith’s caregivers struggle to provide him with adequate care. A crowdfunding site has been set up to help with this:

]]>Lunatic Soul: Under the Fractured Sky. Wherein I review both Fractured and the putative follow-up, Under the Fragmented Sky.http://theresonancecascade.com/lunatic-soul-under-the-fractured-sky-wherein-i-review-both-fractured-and-the-putative-follow-up-under-the-fragmented-sky-2/
Wed, 30 May 2018 00:53:41 +0000http://theresonancecascade.com/?p=377Continue reading Lunatic Soul: Under the Fractured Sky. Wherein I review both Fractured and the putative follow-up, Under the Fragmented Sky.→]]>On the other hand…

The tracks from this short album/EP/however you want to call it, were written during the Fractured sessions, but clearly did not fit that with album’s feel or direction. However, they were good enough (and I think recognizing how much of a departure from LS Fractured really was), that Mariusz Duda decided to gather them together into their own release.

In fact, I submit that Mariusz Duda had no choice but to release this album. Under the Fragmented Sky is an astonishing collection of music, so deeply evocative of everything Lunatic Soul as an idea stands for that I wonder whether LS really is an entity unto itself and Duda can only bow to its demands for life. I barely dared hope for something even half as good (especially after the disappointment of Fractured).

Or the tl:dr version of the previous paragraphs: Under the Fragmented Sky is a miracle.

The music on UtFS runs the Lunatic Soul gamut: it is acoustic and heavy, delicate and jagged, sombre and uplifting, all at once. The tracks are short and to the point, but somehow manage to cover a huge amount of emotional ground over their length – as does the album. UtFS is a succinct 36 minutes long, and to my mind is a stellar example of a skill set that does not get enough attention: Duda’s uncanny ability to arrange mood and melody, to manipulate emotion when constrained by time. Consider that Anno Domini High Definition is arguably the best Riverside album while being the shortest, or the almost perfect cohesion of Memories in My Head, their magnificent 33–minute-short EP. Here is a master hand at work.

The album is mostly instrumental (there are two short songs with lyrics) – which helps to place it firmly in the Lunatic Soul canon. It begins with “He Av En”, jumpy and ragged, vocoder-heavy, which then slides into the abstract and oblique “Trials”, a track that evokes the feeling of “Sky Drawn in Crayon” from Walking on a Flashlight Beam, without actually sounding like it. The music continues to move through various moods: sombre, poignant, delicate angst, echoey and edgy, acoustic and electronic, with haunting, distorted non-word vocals running through several of the songs. There is a lot of the feel of WoaFB: the move towards a more electronic sound that began on that album is developed more fully here.

The album ends with the astonishing “Untamed”. This is a straightforward pop song, vocals, guitar, bass, piano, real drums; fresh, upbeat, bright and beautiful, and it is the perfect wind-up to what may be the Lunatic Soul masterpiece. I cannot imagine this album ending any other way.

It is impossible to decide which is the “best” track on this album; each one is such an integral part of the whole that singling out one or two would be like cutting off a limb, or removing an eye (but for all that I feel very much drawn to “Rinsing the Night”…). It is an album that should be listened to from first note to the last, because while Fractured is a collection of songs, Under the Fragmented Sky is entire, a complete, organic entity. Given that these tracks are essentially outtakes, it is astonishing just how cohesive the album really is. I do know this: Under the Fragmented Sky is the worthy successor to Walking on a Flashlight Beam. It showcases the evolution of the LS sound: immersive and syncretic, evocative, commanding attention, not a wasted or superfluous note or idea.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that UtFS is the pinnacle of the Lunatic Soul Project thus far, displacing Impressions (which has held that spot since I discovered LS). Whether this will be a long-term relationship remains to be seen, but at the moment it sounds like the album of the year. At least, it’s going to force any other releases work very hard to reach that spot.

]]>Lunatic Soul: Under the Fractured Sky. Wherein I review both Fractured and the putative follow-up, Under the Fragmented Sky.http://theresonancecascade.com/lunatic-soul-under-the-fractured-sky-wherein-i-review-both-fractured-and-the-putative-follow-up-under-the-fragmented-sky/
Wed, 30 May 2018 00:42:12 +0000http://theresonancecascade.com/?p=374Continue reading Lunatic Soul: Under the Fractured Sky. Wherein I review both Fractured and the putative follow-up, Under the Fragmented Sky.→]]>Part One: Fractured

It is no secret by now (to anyone) that Fractured, the fifth Lunatic Soul album, was not the album of 2017 for me. I stuck it in at Number 5 but that was probably higher than it should have been. To say that I was disappointed and baffled would be an understatement. No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t take. Fractured is anomalous, an outlier, straddling the border between Lunatic Soul and Riverside, not really one or the other: but perhaps closer in spirit to the last half of Love, Fear and the Time Machine than to any Lunatic Soul album.

It is hard to pin down exactly where the problem lies. I know this might sound a bit…self-serving, but the warning bells rang when so many people, heretofore not particular LS fans, embraced the album with enthusiasm. Lunatic Soul is a project with a fundamentally different feel than Riverside, darker and more ambient, less hard (but not “soft” by any means) dense and percussive, more adventurous and syncretic, perhaps even more nuanced. It is a project that has a rather more specialized audience, and perhaps a more dedicated one; certainly a much smaller following than Riverside. So it seemed distinctly odd that suddenly so many Riverside fans should profess to love the new album so much.

It is indeed an album of high accomplishment, with the trademark beautiful melodic passages that are a Mariusz Duda forté, and with some very powerful moments. But somehow, it doesn’t add up. The whole is not more than the sum of its parts. It is an album of fragments, a couple of very good songs (“Blood on the Tightrope”, “Fractured”) and exceptional bits from other tracks (“A Thousand Shards of Heaven”, “Battlefield”). But it has few of the attributes of Lunatic Soul. Duda has been moving away from lush analogue sounds towards more electronically-driven music, so the sound is sparser, more open, cooler. The rich density of small percussion is largely absent, replaced by a lot of guitar and electronic effects. This trend began with Walking on a Flashlight Beam, but that album retains the Lunatic Soul gestalt. Fractured has moved in a different direction.

For me though, the biggest issue is that there is just too much singing. Yes, you read that right. And this has nothing to do with the fact that I happen to like instrumental music. Fractured is an extraordinarily vocal-dependent album, jam-packed with lyrics, overflowing with words. There are times when the verbiage overwhelms the songs, cascades over the edges and floods the place. One feels that Duda was driven to just say stuff, constraints of the song structure be damned. I find this more distracting than engaging.

Which leads to the other problem: the lyrics are so deeply personal that it is difficult to listen to them. Mariusz Duda has made no secret of the reason behind the album, the need to exorcise ghosts, to rid his soul of the demons and tragedies of the past several years; anyone who knows that history can hardly fault him for indulging in maybe the only kind of therapy that would work. However, while his lyrics have always had a suspiciously personal feel, on Fractured he has taken it to a whole other level. There is no doubt at all that he is not speaking in general terms. As such, this excruciatingly intimate baring of his soul leaves one feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic.

In the end, Fractured is an album that sounds nice when I play it, and I can get through it with no problem, except that, unlike all the other Lunatic Soul albums (and most of Riverside for that matter) I play it out of obligation, not desire. That actually makes me feel bad.

]]>Looking Ahead: The Music of 2018http://theresonancecascade.com/looking-ahead-the-music-of-2018/
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 16:20:22 +0000http://theresonancecascade.com/?p=369Continue reading Looking Ahead: The Music of 2018→]]>Two reasons for this post: 1) to make a list of the stuff that is out/will be coming out/has been rumoured might appear at some point this year; and 2) to keep the blog alive. I really do need to actually write stuff for it…otherwise why am I dishing out $150 a year?

It might be a bit early to talk about new releases (for me; I do not accumulate new music at the pace of some others I know), but there does seem to be enough interesting stuff upcoming to make it worth taking a look to the future. There is a spate of albums coming out this spring, and then we wait for the fall season. If certain rumours/promises come true, it could be another epic year.

So far in 2018:

The Temperance Movement: A Deeper Cut : This album is seriously kicking my ass. Great blues rock from England. These guys are sharp and tight as hell, and clearly know what they are doing.

Dope Default: Ofrenda: Loose and dirty hard/stoner rock from Greece. Ofrenda is their debut album, and it sounds like a debut album, but it is certainly listenable and has some good moments. They are worth keeping an eye on.

Upcoming for sure/preordered (or will be):

Riverside: I have heard one track from this album, in demo form … and ohboy ohboy ohboy. If the album lives up to that promise…well, The Boys are Back. Fingers crossed.

Lunatic Soul: Under the Fragmented Sky (EP) – tracks that did not make it on to Fractured but are worth a release. As above – I heard one track from this, and it revives my hopes for a return to the LS of old—or more precisely the LS that sets hooks deep in my soul.

Solar Fields: Ourdom – time for some classic industrial electronica. I like some of his stuff more than others; I preordered the album on the basis of the youtube preview. I hope it is worth it.

Amorphis: Queen of Time. One track (“The Bee”) released so far. The Finnish folk-metallers sound much more symphonic and expansive, while retaining the heaviness and their signature growl/clean vocal tradeoff. Based on this track I’m not sure it will equal the last album.

Awooga: Conduit – nice heavy metal/hard rock, they had a great EP from 2016 which I would play more often if I didn’t have to switch to 45 rpm (details details…). A couple tracks already available to preview, they seem to have developed a more spacious sound.

The Fierce and the Dead: The Euphoric — I like them, but often what they do tends to get a bit too far into the technical/alt/art-rock region for me to love them. But when they are good they are great, and I think the new one holds some promise. Preordered based on the released track.

Toundra: Vortex – I have all the previous albums from these Spanish post-rockers, that I don’t play all that often…but once in a while they hit the spot. The single “Cobra” sounds pretty much like Toundra, dense and heavy.

Front Line Assembly: WarMech – new soundtrack for a new game. I find myself kind of up and down about these guys, I much prefer Leeb’s other project Noise Unit, but on the strength of the previous game OST (AirMech, which is pretty nice) I sprang for the preorder.

VNV Nation: Noire – Out in October, described as “dark and intense”, first studio album since Transnational in 2013.

Leech – The only Swiss band in my collection. It has been what – 5 years since their last one? Six? Anyway, it was a pretty nice post-metal album, and the only album I tried purely because of the cover. Be interesting to hear what the new one will sound like.

Nordic Union: wherein Ronnie Atkins of Pretty Maids (Denmark) lends his iron pipes to the sound of the hard rock outfit Eclipse (Sweden). At this point it is just the promise of a new release, no other info. But that is enough for me: hopefully it will be the same kind of straight-up kick-ass hard rock as the first one, which I love.

Rumoured for 2018:

Au4: Last fall an American internet radio guy scheduled a playthrough of 2014’s …And Down Goes the Sky, and had the guys live on the air to talk about it. They said a new album should appear this year. I surely hope so…if it is anything like that last one, it will be a strong contender for album of the year.

Missed from 2017:

Hypergiant: Father Sky – interesting doom/psych rock. It has its moments, and the track “Colossi” is truly epic, but the album might be a bit too much all at once.

Believe: VII Widows – a band that has been around for a while, in various incarnations, guitarist Mirek Gil’s vehicle since the end of Collage. I am not a fan of long-winded modern prog, as many of you know, but VII Widows is surprisingly good, very nice arrangements and passages, and I must say beautiful guitar themes (Gil on here reminds me of Steve Hackett, and there is nothing wrong with that). I am not crazy about the somewhat overblown and mannered style of the vocalist, but there are few enough vocal sections that he ends up intruding less on the experience than would otherwise be the case. Nice and listenable.

Decapitated: Anticult – I confess that I checked this out mostly out of morbid curiosity; the band found itself in deep shit in late 2017 while on tour in America (i.e. they were tossed in jail in Seattle for three months; charges were all dropped). Not generally being a fan of thrash metal (or so I thought), I had not paid them any attention. Well, you just never know: when I listened to Anticult I found, inexplicably, that I liked it a whole lot: in fact, it would have been one of the stronger releases of last year had I found it sooner.